India’s electric vehicle story is well underway. Sales are growing, policy support is strong, and there is genuine enthusiasm across the ecosystem — from consumers to corporates to state governments. But working at the intersection of energy infrastructure and e-mobility, we keep returning to one persistent gap: we are adding EVs to our roads faster than we are building the confidence to drive them anywhere.
The vehicle is often ready. The infrastructure, in many places, still is not. That is the problem worth solving — and solving well.
India Is Moving — Faster Than You Think
The progress is real and worth acknowledging.
India’s public EV charging network has grown nearly sixfold between 2022 and 2025. EV sales have crossed record numbers year after year. The government’s PM E-DRIVE scheme has committed significant capital specifically for public charging infrastructure. States like Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh are already racing ahead, and even smaller states are catching up fast.
This is not the India of ten years ago, waiting for someone else to lead. This is a country that has decided to move — and is moving.
But momentum alone is not enough. We need to be strategic about how we build this infrastructure, not just how fast.
The Real Problem Is Not What You Think
When people talk about EV adoption challenges, they often jump straight to the cost of vehicles or battery range. Those are real concerns, but the deeper barrier is trust. And trust comes from reliability.
A significant share of public chargers across India are reportedly non-functional at any given time. Site utilisation at many stations remains very low. A driver who stops on a highway, plugs in, and gets no power — that driver does not just lose time. That driver loses faith.
And then there is the distribution problem. Urban India is getting covered. But India is not just its cities. The moment you step onto national highways connecting Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns, the charging map becomes patchy and unpredictable.
The Golden Quadrilateral — India’s most critical highway network — carries a disproportionate share of the country’s road freight, yet fast charging along these corridors is still far from consistent. This is where we need to act with urgency.
What Scalable Really Means
At Delta, we have been in this space for over 15 years globally, delivering millions of EV chargers across the world. When we talk about building a scalable network, we are not talking about just installing more boxes on a wall. We are talking about systems that are intelligent, interoperable, and future-ready.
Power levels that match real needs. A slow AC charger is fine for overnight charging at a housing society. But a logistics hub, a bus depot, or a highway stop needs something entirely different. Delta India’s R&D team has developed a high-capacity DC fast charger — locally built, designed for Indian conditions, capable of charging two vehicles simultaneously at high efficiency. For heavy-duty commercial vehicles, we are looking at megawatt-scale charging systems. The ecosystem has to serve everyone, from the daily office commuter to the long-haul truck driver.
Reliability by design. A charger that works most of the time is not good enough if it fails when you are 200 km from the nearest town. We need remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, and fast response systems built into every installation. The non-functional charger problem in India is solvable — but it requires operators and manufacturers to take uptime as seriously as they take installation numbers.
Grid-smart infrastructure. Charging dozens of EVs simultaneously at a highway hub is a significant grid load. In semi-urban and rural India, where grid capacity is already stretched, this is a genuine technical problem. The answer lies in integrating solar generation with battery storage and smart energy management at each charging hub. This lowers operating costs, reduces grid dependency, and makes green mobility actually green — not just on paper.
One network, not a hundred islands. Today, a driver might need multiple apps to charge their car across a single interstate journey. Interoperability — the ability for any EV to charge at any station using any payment method — is not a luxury. It is a necessity. India needs a unified charging experience, much like UPI transformed digital payments. The technology exists. What is needed now is the will to standardize it.
The Highway Opportunity India Cannot Miss
If there is one area that could unlock EV adoption faster than anything else, it is highway charging.
India has a remarkable opportunity here. We are not retrofitting a century-old infrastructure like countries in Europe or North America. We are building fresh, and we can build it right. Dedicated EV charging hubs at every major highway toll plaza, fuel station, and rest stop — spaced at regular intervals on key corridors — would eliminate range anxiety for highway travel almost entirely.
Fuel retail networks partnering with EV charging operators — that is exactly the kind of thinking we need more of. The fuel station of tomorrow is already being designed today.
What We Owe to the Next Billion EV Users
India’s EV story is not complete until it reaches the auto-rickshaw driver in a small town, the delivery rider in a Tier-2 city, and the small transport operator running inter-district routes. These are the people whose livelihoods will be transformed most dramatically by the shift to electric mobility — if and only if the infrastructure is there to support them.
At Delta, our commitment to India goes beyond selling equipment. We have four manufacturing facilities here, two R&D centres, and a team that understands this market from the inside. When we build for India, we build for Indian roads, Indian heat, Indian grid conditions, and the Indian customer who needs it to work the first time, every time.
India is not just a market for us. It is a mission.
The Road Ahead
To reach meaningful EV penetration by 2030, India will need to multiply its charging infrastructure many times over. That number sounds daunting. But consider this: in just three years, the network has grown nearly sixfold. The growth instinct is there. What we need now is better planning, better technology, and deeper collaboration between government, industry, and energy providers.
The charging network that India builds in the next five years will determine the pace of its clean mobility transition for the next two decades.
We have every reason to be confident. And every reason to move fast.
Authored by – Mr. Rajesh Kaushal, Energy Infrastructure & Industrial Solutions (EIS) Business Group Head, India & SAARC, Delta Electronics India
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